Town file
St. Cloud, Minnesota
St. Cloud, Minnesota (Stearns, Benton and Sherburne counties, Minnesota) is the town in one episode of Small Town Murder, the comedy true-crime podcast: episode 170, "An Attempted Suburban Vampire Cult" (7 May 2020). In March 1988 St. Cloud, Minnesota, was a city of about 45,000 people in the middle of the state, known as the Granite City for the quarries that had opened in the 1880s.
- Town
- St. Cloud
- County
- Stearns, Benton and Sherburne counties
- State
- Minnesota
- Country
- USA
- Episodes
- 170
- Approximate location
- 45.527, -94.171
Episode 170 / 7 May 2020 / 159 min / full
An Attempted Suburban Vampire Cult
"This week, we're going to Minnesota ... St. Cloud, Minnesota. It's in central Minnesota ... this town is in three different counties." about 0:04:33
The case: Murder of Donald Wayne Gall (March 1988). Read the case file.
The figures, as told in 2020
- Population
- about 67,000
- Median age
- about 29 and a half
- Median household income
- $46,601
- Median home value
- $151,800
- Two-bedroom rent
- about $1,200
- Religious
- about 51%
- Property crime
- ▲ almost double
- Violent crime
- exactly average
History, in brief
- Indigenous people lived in the area for thousands of years before Europeans arrived; the Ottawa and Winnebago tribes were there. about 0:06:00
- Minnesota was organised as a territory in 1849, and the St. Cloud area was opened up in 1851 after treaty negotiations with the Winnebago. about 0:06:43
- John Wilson, a Maine native, named the town after St. Cloud, the Paris suburb where Napoleon had his favourite palace. about 0:07:05
- For a long time it was a way station where train cars came through with ox carts. about 0:07:22
- It was incorporated about 1856 as three distinct settlements: Uppertown, Middletown and Lowertown. about 0:07:31
- Middletown was mainly Catholic German immigrants and people from the East Coast. about 0:07:47
- Uppertown was plotted by Lowry, a slaveholder and trader from Kentucky, who brought slaves with him even though Minnesota was a free territory. about 0:07:54
- Lowry was on the Territorial Council and was elected St. Cloud's first mayor in 1856. about 0:08:40
- A woman who came from Pittsburgh ran an abolitionist newspaper that attacked Lowry; he organised a committee of vigilance that broke into the office and threw her printing press into the Mississippi River. about 0:09:04
- The Supreme Court's 1857 Dred Scott decision declared the Missouri Compromise unconstitutional, making the territory's prohibition on slavery unenforceable. about 0:10:01
- Most of the Southern people in St. Cloud left when the Civil War broke out and took their slaves with them; Lowry died in 1865 after his side lost. about 0:10:29
- Granite quarries opened in the area in the 1880s, which is why it is called the Granite City. about 0:11:03
- In 1917 Samuel Pandolfo started the Pan Motor Company in St. Cloud and claimed Pan cars would make it the new Detroit. about 0:11:10
- Pandolfo was investigated after a complaint from the Associated Advertising Clubs of Minneapolis, indicted for using the mails to further a scheme to defraud, acquitted a couple of times and later convicted and imprisoned for defrauding investors. about 0:11:58
The reviews read out
"No stars, titled 'not so great': lived there 15 years, little to do for teenagers or children, moving to California because the weather has become terrible, the racism is insane and it is not a good place to raise a child."about 0:12:45
2 stars
"Lots of crime, a stabbing at a local mall, would not recommend the school district and mentions bullying in the schools."about 0:13:53
"No stars, 'culturally devoid, racially intolerant': population has more than doubled in 20 years, only American, Italian, Chinese and Mexican food, the best restaurants are Olive Garden or Red Lobster, and openly racist and homophobic talk is commonplace."about 0:14:46
Nearest Small Town Murder towns
- Corcoran, Minnesota41 miles
- Andover, Minnesota45 miles
- Ham Lake, Minnesota51 miles
- Crystal, Minnesota52 miles
- Lino Lakes, Minnesota58 miles
- Shakopee, Minnesota62 miles
Everything here is as told in the episode, on the date it went out; figures and places may have changed since. Endings are covered: open an episode and use the spoiler switch to read them.